Bilharzia: A History of Imperial Tropical Medicine (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine)
Cambridge University Press, 10/3/1991
EAN 9780521400862, ISBN10: 0521400864
Hardcover, 372 pages, 23.8 x 16.2 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
The advent of tropical medicine was a direct consequence of European and American imperialism, when military personnel, colonial administrators, businessmen, and settlers encountered a new set of diseases endemic to the tropics. Professor Farley describes how governments and organizations in Britain, the British colonies, the United States, Central and South America, South Africa, China, and the World Health Organization faced one particular tropical disease, bilharzia or schistosomiasis. Bilharzia is caused by a species of blood vessel-inhabiting parasitic worms and today afflicts over 200 million people in seventy-four countries. John Farley demonstrates that British and American imperial policies and attitudes largely determined the nature of tropical medicine. Western medical practitioners defined the type of medical system that was imposed on the indigenous populations; they dictated which diseases were important and worthy of study, which diseases were to be controlled, and which control methods were to be used.
List of tables and figures
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
Part I. The Imperial Approach (1898–World War II)
2. 1898
a declaration of war
3. 1898
another war, another continent
4. Bilharzia (1850–1918)
the Looss controversies
5. The International Health Board
6. Bilharzia
optimism in Egypt (1918–39)
7. Into the 1930s
economics of disease
8. The 1930s
empires in transition
9. Bilharzia
World War II
Part II. A Brief Interlude
Social Medicine
10. New ideas
11. Bilharzia
pessimism in Egypt (1940–55)
12. Bilharzia
victory in China?
Part III. The Professional Approach (1950–1970s)
13. The new British Empire
finding the experts
14. South Africa (1950–60)
social medicine versus scientific research
15. Bilharzia
second to only one
16. Bilharzia (1950–1970s)
a strategic change
17. Conclusion
the imperial triad
Notes
Index.